iluvcynosjokes

・ ・ ・ ・ ≛ ・ ・ ・ ・

I turned to the brown-haired man, holding out my hand in greeting.

“Thank you for that.” I pulled the pendant out of my pocket. “Here’s the necklace back.”

He shook my hand but didn’t take the pendant.

“Eh, I don’t need that, but I do want something in return for helping you,” he grinned, green eyes reflecting the street lights.

“Very well, what is it you need from me?” I carefully hooked the pendant necklace onto a silver bracelet around my right wrist.

“I need you to be my girlfriend for a little while.”

I paused.

“What?”

“You heard me. And by how that encounter just went I’m assuming you don’t have anything goin’ on for you right now.” Clearly this guy was intelligent enough to realize that, yet it still seemed a little bizarre.

“I’m just here to visit my sister, she needs me urgently,” I replied, though I was curious. “Why me?”

He let out a dramatically exasperated sigh. “Well, I need someone who needs me just as much as I need them, lotta ‘need’ in that sentence, huh." He swept a hand through his brown bangs. “Tell me, how old’s your sister and does she have a partner?”

His question was reasonable enough in this strange situation. “Her eighteenth birthday was a few days ago, I don’t suppose you’re going to go after her since I rejected you?”

“Hah! No, no, nothing like that. I was gonna suggest I set’er up with my brother, he’s a little older than me but he needs a partner as much as I do.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “And how old might you and your brother be, mister?”

“I’m twenty, he’s twenty-one, and you?”

“Hm, I’m twenty-two, and you already know my sister’s eighteen.” I rubbed my temple. It couldn’t hurt to try this, it would give me and my sister shelter from the officers everywhere and it would pay this weird guy back for helping me as well.

“Fine,” I said at last.

The man grins again. “I’m Silas.”

“Selene.”

We shook hands on it.

Silas didn’t release my hand right away. Instead he let his fingers linger, like he was measuring whether I’d flinch or laugh. I almost did both, then a shadow moved at the corner of the block and I froze.

The officer from before was back. He walked with that slow, watchful stride of someone accustomed to looking for what others tried to hide.

Silas’s grin turned more mischievous. “Yo, Ron,” he said, casual as tossing a coin. The name landed between them like an invitation.

The officer stopped. For an absurd half-second the world felt smaller than the space between their faces. Then he stepped forward and the mouth that had been ready to bark orders a few minutes ago folded into a look that almost—almost—was relief.

“Silas.” He inclined his head like that answered everything and nothing. He looked older than his twenty-one, less like a boy apprenticing at authority, more like someone carrying two jobs: one for the state and one for his family.

Silas let my hand go and clapped Ron on the shoulder. “Told you I’d find someone tonight.” His eyes flicked to me with a roguish, “See? I work in mysterious ways” expression.

Ron didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. “You shouldn’t have been out here alone,” he said to me. It was the kind of sentence that could be either accusation or care, depending on the angle you caught it from.

“I know,” I said before I could stop myself. Honest, stupid, immediate. The truth had always had a way of tripping my tongue. It was a risky move: honesty in a world where being unknown was safer than being known.

Ron’s eyes didn’t leave mine. There was a flicker then—surprise, maybe—like he was cataloguing my story for the night. He glanced back at Silas, then at the pendant on my wrist. “You got lucky,” he said to Silas, and the word was not empty.

Silas ducked his head, pleased like a kid who’d just gotten away with an excellent prank. “You owe me, Ronan. And she—” he jabbed a thumb toward me, “—owes me too.”

Ronan’s jaw tightened, not in anger, but in thought. “You two will need paperwork,” he said finally. “The registry’s not forgiving. Temporary partner registration, formal affidavit—”

Silas made a face. “Bureaucracy ruins romance.”

Ronan’s expression didn’t change, but his voice lost a little bit of its edge. “It keeps people alive,” he corrected. Then he added, “I’ll process it. On one condition.”

Silas raised an eyebrow. “Which is—?”

Ronan reached out and adjusted the pendant chain over the bracelet on my wrist until it settled against my pulse. “You stay out of trouble,” he said sharply. “We don’t need more problems right now.”

Silas laughed lightly. “Deal.”

I swallowed and let the air around me become a little too loud. I was partnering up with strangers who happened to be brothers—one who could charm a cop, and one who was a cop. The thought should have terrified me. Instead my heart did that reckless, traitorous thing: it sped up like I’d sprinted across a dark street.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get Aria signed up then.”

Ronan’s eyes briefly flicked to Silas again, and for the first time I caught something like a private conversation passing between them without words. Silas’s smile softened when he answered, “We’ll take her under our wing. Ron will make sure you both survive the paperwork.” He looked at me like it was a promise and a dare.

Ronan cleared his throat and took a step back into the shadow. “We leave at dawn,” he said roughly. “Bring your ID, if you have it. If not, bring what proof you can.”

Silas bumped my shoulder. “You’ve got us now. Lucky girl.”

Lucky, I thought, feeling the word as if it might fracture or catch fire. The drone’s hum returned overhead, indifferent. We walked on, and the city watched with a hundred unblinking eyes.

I posted it on Quetev so I guess if you wanna read it there instead, be my guest. (Sorry it's so bad folks.)